26
votes
What is the proper definition of a verb?
It's important to draw a distinction between syntax and semantics.
In syntax (how words fit together), words are put into "categories" based on the way they fit together with others. If I ...
- 63.8k
25
votes
Accepted
Stable words in the Indo-European language family
Common usage creates irregularity, but not because those words are likely to change—rather, it's because they're not likely to change! These common words are likely to stay in their current forms even ...
- 63.8k
22
votes
Accepted
Do most languages have the same basic verb tenses?
Short answer: Not at all! Some languages only have two: past and non-past (English, Japanese). Others have past, present, and future (Ancient Greek). Still others have separate "recent" and "distant" ...
- 63.8k
18
votes
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Are there any languages where verbs in the past form are used with the future tense?
Let me explain it all in detail. The Slavic languages originally had 4 past tenses, of which two were simple and two analytical. The simple past tenses of the Old Church Slavonic verb “to see” видѣти (...
- 17.7k
17
votes
Accepted
Is a language possible without verbs or without nouns?
It is not possible for there to be a human language that does not have a way of referring to entities, or to predicate states and actions of an entity. If that is what you mean by "noun" and "verb", ...
- 81.9k
15
votes
Accepted
Why is tense obligatory in some languages and not in others?
Ultimately we can't answer why one language grammaticalises tense and why another language doesn't.
But what we can say is that all languages have at least one major verbal grammatical category. Tense ...
- 6,126
14
votes
Is there a name for the type of word that the word, “scarecrow,” is? (a transitive verb conjoined with its object)
This is a specific subtype of exocentric compound. An exocentric compound is one which doesn't inherit the type of either of its constituents: a scarecrow is neither a type of crow nor a type of ...
- 10.8k
13
votes
Does English have [ inchoative aspect ]?
This is a case where we have to distinguish between the ability to express something in a language and the presence or absence of a grammatical structure dedicated to expressing that something.
...
- 6,689
13
votes
Accepted
What is the past tense of 'yeet'?
Although it may be tempting to look back towards Old English prototypes, one has to be aware of the time depth of any neologism. That's why finding the first occurrence is so important.
The ...
- 7,263
13
votes
Using 'is' after non-denoting phrases
This is called a gnomic sentence, expressing a universal truth about a relationship between predicates rather than a fact about a specific entity.
Similarly, consider the sentence "water freezes ...
- 63.8k
12
votes
Why is tense obligatory in some languages and not in others?
All human languages allow the expression of distinctions in time reference, so there's always a way to describe the situation that one event precedes another. Some languages do this with special ...
- 81.9k
11
votes
What is the concept of verb agreement with passive-active level in Hebrew?
Although I haven't heard of the term "degrees of passive/active" before, they are almost certainly talking about the verbal stems. This is a concept indeed alien to Western European (or broader) but ...
- 3,768
10
votes
Is "imperatives have invisible subjects" a universal?
An interesting, non-exotic, case is German. In the familiar register you can say “geh nach Hause”, “geht nach Hause”, with implicit subject, but you can also say “geh du nach Hause” and “geht Ihr nach ...
- 23.7k
8
votes
The origin of the term 'verb'
Our English grammatical terminology is taken from Latin, where in turn it is calqued on Greek. Noun = nomen = onoma literally means “name”; the idea is that a noun is the name of a particular person ...
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8
votes
What is the past tense of 'yeet'?
I have a field sighting of the form "yoten" to report.
In January I was involved with the organizing for the big pro-Second-Amendment demonstration in Richmond, VA. One of the central concerns of ...
- 81
8
votes
Accepted
Is there a linguistic term for replacing past tense verb with present tense?
Sometimes this phenomenon is known as the narrative present or (especially by Latinists) historical present.
Another potential phenomenon going on is that your dialect has developed relative tense. ...
- 2,364
8
votes
Accepted
What is meant by "s/he flies" in Plains Cree dictionary?
In nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree) and other languages in the family, the "words" are as you say, more like "phrases".
The concept of "is" doesn't exist in the same way in ...
- 196
8
votes
Accepted
Is there a universal (general) definition of gerund, infinitive and participle?
Not really.
"Participle" can be defined pretty reliably as "an inflected form of a verb that acts as an adjective". But the line between a participle and any other adjective ...
- 63.8k
8
votes
Is there a name for the type of word that the word, “scarecrow,” is? (a transitive verb conjoined with its object)
There are actually several of these words in English: "rattlesnake", "crybaby", "scatterbrain", "killjoy", "tattletale", "tumbleweed", etc. ...
- 63.8k
8
votes
Accepted
Are there languages without non-finite verb forms at all?
Inuit (Greenlandic)
My Greenlandic is rudimentary at best, but as far as I can recall from my uni classes many years back, Greenlandic (and I believe other Inuit) verbs have only finite forms. The ...
- 3,953
7
votes
The origin of the term 'verb'
The simplest answer is that the English verbal doesn't come from the English verb.
They both have a common root in the Latin verbum, word, but came to English via different routes, and took on ...
- 368
7
votes
Accepted
How to detect verb in a sentence where the verb is invisible in the sentence?
This phenomenon is called zero copula. It especially common for third person present tense.
I recommend that you read on how this is handled in syntax parsers for Russian or Hindi. It was also an ...
- 7,531
7
votes
Accepted
Is there a language where another verb form is simpler/more basic than the imperative?
Classical Arabic may provide an example: see section 6.1.3 of Brame 1970. His account is that the affirmative imperative is formed by truncating the subject prefix ta- from the 2nd person jussive, and ...
- 81.9k
7
votes
Name for a verb form meaning "feign or pretend to do sth"
As I wrote in a comment, this is one of the functions of the Biblical Hebrew Dt (hitpael) stem, but the two reference grammars I had a look at do not agree on terminology:
Waltke and O'Connor (An ...
- 3,768
7
votes
Why do verbs use 1st singular present active indicative instead of infinitive as the "canonical" or "representative" form in Latin?
Historical accident.
Roman (and Ancient Greek) grammarians seem to have thought of verb paradigms somewhat like noun paradigms: the forms of puella "girl" are puella, puellae, etc, and the ...
- 63.8k
7
votes
What is the proper definition of a verb?
Semantically, there are two main functions in language: reference and predication. Some morphological items or words primarily refer to entities in the perceived world, while other items relate the ...
- 540
6
votes
Did all regular/irregular verbs arise from the same two sources?
That's not a generally accepted idea. Either you've misremembered, or the source you were reading was indeed marginal (the field of etymology, sad to say, sees a lot of cranks.)
The definition of a "...
- 17.8k
6
votes
Accepted
Why does French use “be” as the auxiliary for a few verbs?
As usual in language evolution, having two auxiliaries wasn't a goal, things just happened this way (and in fact the long-term evolution is towards a single auxiliary).
There is an article in French ...
6
votes
What is the past tense of 'yeet'?
I don't understand what you mean by saying "might mean the word was originally in class 5 but switched classes". You have said that yeet is "recently coined". It doesn't seem to have an Old English ...
- 17.8k
6
votes
Accepted
Why some verbs have -tion while others don't, when being nounified
Would be good to know if this is just because of the fact that English is messy, or there is some other reason.
Yes and yes.
Yes, because English is messy. The -tion examples are of course all ...
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